Category Archives: reading

The Ecstasy of Repurposing

From Open Source, about an impending show:

We can’t stop talking about Jonathan Lethem’s essay in this month’s Harper’s. If you haven’t read it, you really should. Nothing that follows in this post will be nearly as interesting. Go ahead. And this post will still be here when you return. You know you want to.

Those of us fascinated by the cultural phenomenon (and the practical process) of mashups and the general subject of repurposing will be especially interested in both the essay and the forthcoming podcast.

Whitewash as Public Service

Benjamin DeMott in October’s Harper’s:

The 9/11 Commission Report, despite the vast quantity of labor behind it, is a cheat and a fraud. It stands as a series of evasive maneuvers that infantilize the audience, transform candor into iniquity, and conceal realities that demand immediate inspection and confrontation. Because it is continuously engaged in scotching all attempts to distinguish better from worse leadership responses, the Commission can’t discharge its duty to educate the audience about the habits of mind and temperament essential in those chosen to discharge command responsibility during crises.

(read the whole thing)

Reading Ingrid Monson’s The African Diaspora

In the context of globalization and music, I happened on this book by the sometime cornetist of the Klezmer Conservatory Band. Some nice tidbits:
Mitchell’s Jazz Kings recorded in the early 1920s in Paris (a bunch of .ram exampes available on the page). The site notes that

In the 1920s the Jazz Kings played a five year residency at the Casino de Paris. Mitchell had his own American restaurant called Mitchell’s in Montmartre and helped Bricktop (Ada Smith-Ducongé) set up her first club, The Music Box in Paris…

Stephane Grappelli remembers that the first jazz tune he heard was Zez Confrey’s “Stumblin’ “, played by Mitchell’s Jazz Kings… (Harris in Monson 2003:109)
Harris goes on to say:

Jazz has, throughout its history, held appeal for people from many different societies and from different places within society, including at its margins. It is rooted in –and is a manifestation of– the human ability to redefine marginality as a “location of radical openness and possibility” (hooks 1990:153)… (Harris in Monson 2003:123)